WTTC put a number on the problem this week: the Middle East is forecast to be the only region on earth where Travel & Tourism GDP shrinks in 2026, down 14.5% to $330bn. What’s notable is not that governments are responding – they have been for weeks – but how. Rather than waiting for the travellers who used to come, Abu Dhabi, Ras Al Khaimah and Oman spent the week going after specific new ones, and in one case building an entirely new kind of product to get them to say yes.
Abu Dhabi picks a market and prices the acquisition
DCT Abu Dhabi’s new pilot programme, running 1 August to 31 October, covers the full UAE entry visa cost for Indian passport holders booking at least three nights in an Abu Dhabi hotel through a participating travel partner – a subsidy of Dh285 ($77) per traveller, capped at 20,000 visas, worth roughly $1.5m in total. Indians already make up about 35% of the UAE’s expat population and some 800,000 live in Abu Dhabi alone, so this isn’t opening a new market – it’s converting an existing community’s visiting friends and relatives into paying hotel guests, with a dollar figure attached to what that conversion is worth to the emirate.
Ras Al Khaimah doesn’t discount the trip – it insures it
The more interesting move came from Ras Al Khaimah, which launched “RAK Guarantee” with Russian tour operator Intourist and 15 participating hotels, including Waldorf Astoria Ras Al Khaimah and DoubleTree by Hilton Marjan Island. Unlike a price cut, the programme is triggered by a specific condition: if either the Russian or UAE government formally advises against travel between the two countries, enrolled hotels waive cancellation penalties within 24 hours, allow free rebooking within 12 months, or let guests check out early without paying for unused nights. Enrolment is automatic and free when booking through Intourist. This is a different category of instrument to a visa subsidy – it’s geopolitical-risk insurance built directly into the booking, and it’s a tacit admission that the travel-advisory risk isn’t hypothetical for this source market. If it works, expect versions of it to appear across other GCC destinations courting Russian, Chinese or South Asian travellers who face their own government advisories.
Oman’s numbers show the diversification is already underway
Oman’s first-half 2026 data, released this month, shows where demand is actually coming from: Emiratis were the largest source of international visitors, at 491,503 arrivals, ahead of India (382,015) and Germany, the leading European market (68,771). Intra-GCC travel – Emiratis visiting Oman – isn’t a hedge against the international shortfall; in Oman’s case, it’s already the base the market is built on, with international recovery layered on top rather than the other way round.
Qatar builds a calendar sized for whoever shows up
Qatar’s approach reads as the least defensive of the four. Doha’s coming months feature Formula 1, MotoGP, the FIFA U-17 World Cup, the Doha Forum, MWC Doha, Design Doha Biennial, the Doha Film Festival and concerts from John Legend, Hans Zimmer and Shakira – a calendar dense enough to generate its own demand regardless of any single source market’s recovery timeline. It is a notable contrast to Abu Dhabi and Ras Al Khaimah’s market-specific plays: Qatar isn’t targeting a nationality, it’s building volume and letting the audience sort itself out.
None of these four moves is really about winning back the pre-war traveller. They’re about deciding which relationships are worth building – or insuring – while that traveller stays away. A subsidised visa, a cancellation guarantee, and a packed calendar are different tools solving the same problem: none of them wait for a ceasefire, and at least one of them, RAK’s insurance model, looks like it could outlast the war it was built to answer.
Sources
https://wttc.org/news/global-trends-report-middle-east-travel-tourism
https://www.khaleejtimes.com/uae/abu-dhabi-free-tourist-visa-indians-new-programme
